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Monday, August 30, 2010

Why Do They Want to Remember?

Yesterday is the day everyone talks about, but the memories for me stem from today.

Around here, it comes creeping every year like an unwanted houseguest, the anniversary of Katrina. The call for stories. The remembrances. The ceremonies.

My most vivid memories were from the next day, today, the day after. I stood in the back of the lobby of the hotel, watching the people as they glued their eyes to the large screen, wondering what was going to happen. It was as if we knew something was wrong, something bad, but we didn't know yet exactly what, or how bad.

Then, live, the first pictures of New Orleans came streaming in. Water everywhere. Familiar landscapes erased. Levies broken.

I watched the people. Stunned and shell shocked, they never expected any of that. They left for a weekend, and some have never moved back.

As we watched, the camera panned in, and a woman started crying. The young man sitting next to her, probably her son, had a look of pain I will never forget, and he was at a loss as to how to comfort her. They sat there and watched as their home, everything their family had ever worked for, burned to the water line. Right there on national television.

Why do they want us to retell? So we won't forget, and so we won't let New Orleans die.

European leaders, in an attempt to end war "for all time", outlaw the crossbow, 1146One of the largest naval battles in history, during the last decade of the ailing, Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty, begins between the forces of two Chinese rebel leaders, 1363Capture of the entire Dutch fleet by British forces under the command of Sir Ralph Abercromby and Admiral Sir Charles Mitchell, 1799Founding of Melbourne, Australian, 1835Founding of Houston, Texas, 1836Hubert Cecil Booth patents a vacuum cleaner, 1901The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in south Louisiana, the longest bridge over water that is not also a viaduct, opens, 1956The Hotline between the leaders of the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union goes into operation, 1963Thurgood Marshall is confirmed as the first African American Justice of the United States Supreme Court, 1967Guion Bluford becomes the first African American astronaut in space, 1983NATO launches Operation Deliberate Force against Bosnian Serb forces, 1995